Reports on lectures in Hokkaido

Amnesty International Speaking Tour 2007
We are not 'terrorists' - 'Anti-terrorism' war and Human-rights in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
Hokkaido

This is the report on lecture in Hokkaido from an anonymous person.

The hall had 30 to 40 seats and as I arrived early, I could take the seat in the front row. I turned around when the opening session was about to start and the hall was filled up and there were people willing to attend the lecture without the seats. The lecture was to start at 6.30 pm and I had wondered how many people would attend as I got off the train and walked around to look for the hall on the frozen ground with the weather getting colder and colder. I thought a lot of people wouldn't feel like going out and I was anxious about the number of the attends so I was surprised with the number of the people there.
When I arrived at the hall, I saw Ms. Rabiye Kadeer with people from Amnesty. She was petite, kind and pretty. She reminded me of my deceased mother and I felt a lump in my throat, but I held back the tears as I wanted to listen to her lecture carefully. There was a banner on the platform and it read

Former "Prisoner of Conscience", Ms. Rabiye Kadeer lectures
We are not 'terrorists' - 'Anti-terrorism' war and Human-rights in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

The banner got to my heart as a powerful message.
A person from Amnesty made a brief description and then Ms. Rabiye started the lecture.

"I am an Uyghur. Uyghurs have our own language, letters and culture. Uyghurs are Muslims. We had huge land and plenty of natural resources. But all of them are perishing by the policy of Chinese Communist Party. If it pursues for 10 more years, the people Uyghur will be disappeared from the earth. I came to Japan to appeal the abuse of Uyghurs' human rights.
Our homeland is East Turkistan, where the Turkic peoples resided for a long time. It is the nation in Central Asia that was used to called Silk road. Chinese invaders entered our country in 1949 and they named our land 'Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region" in 1955 and Uyghurs have been suffering since the invasion. National policy of Chinese Communist Party relocated a huge number of Hans in our land. Hans' population in East Turkistan was 5% before the invasion but now it is more than 50%. Though Uyghur's population made up more than 90% back then but now it is less than 50%. The authorities of local government are suppressing Uyghurs more and more since the invasion.
Abuse of Uyghur's human rights started in 1954. They firstly ousted the landowners and the rich people saying 'defeat the landowners and capitalists' and imprisoned the head of the family and dissected out the family members. The imprisoned people were sentenced to capital punishment or life imprisonment and most of them died in prison. Then they started suppressing Uyghur intellectuals by saying 'fight back the rightists' in 1957. They have been suppressing Uyghur intellectuals, moguls and historians by a number of different nominal terms to violate the human rights of Uyghurs. They arrested religious leaders who were not permitted to practice religious ceremony by Chinese Communist party and abused the religious liberty. Even so, Uyghurs preserved their culture, tradition, religion and letters and being proud of being Uyghurs. But the assimilation policy of central government is getting harsher since the mid 1990s.
The exploitation of the rich natural resources in East Turkistan was carried out by the Hans under central government's lead and all the endowment was taken by Hans. The economical gap between Hans and Uyghurs widen and Uyghurs were left unemployed and the young Uyghurs are despaired with their future. To appeal the situation, people gathered with signs on the hands to make a peaceful demonstration on 5th February 1997. The government crushed those unarmed people with force and now whole the world know about this incident. According to the article on Chinese edition World journal published in New York on 5th February 2003, the number of people got shoot to death at the scene was 407, the number of people went missing was 8,000 and the number of people got arrested after the incident was 61,000 ( though the actual number of participants was between 15,000 to 20,000).
Wang Lequan, the Communist Party member and substantial head of 'Xinjiang' announced proudly that they had executed 55 political criminals from January to August that year on 14th September 2004. It was the official data and I wonder how many unofficial condemned there were. As the Chinese Communist Party is a lying party, I'll leave it to your imagination.
Chinese government is trying to eliminate Uyghurs and hammering out various policies. After the 911 attacks, they are labeling Uyghur as 'terrorists' to justify the human right abuse and suppression. All the education is conducted in Chinese language from2003 and teachers teaching in Uyghur language are chased away from the schools. Young Uyghur females aged between 16 and 25 are relocated into inland China and forced to work as servile labors or being sold. They are trying to perish the people Uyghur by depriving our language, mother-to-be young girls, natural resources and land.
Japan is the most powerful democratic nation not only in Asia but also in the whole world. Please help Uyghurs. Thank you very much for coming and listening to me."

The 2 hour lecture ended and the question and answer session started yet Ms. Rabiye Kadeer never took a seat.